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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27281149">pray you wake to a future bright</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea'>Analinea</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Be still, my whumper's heart [17]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Prodigal Son (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Accidents, Exhaustion, Gen, I'm late for posting this one, Malcolm Whump, Whumptober 2020, and also day 23, as in car accident, it was day 28, like you don't see the comfort but you know it's coming, open happy ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:42:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,689</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27281149</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>People are puzzles that Malcolm has learned to complete with few of the pieces in hand. He picks up one or two, predicts what the whole will represent. Even the broken parts, the ill-fitting ones can tell a story.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Be still, my whumper's heart [17]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>pray you wake to a future bright</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It's like I tried, you know, but I still only finished this one yesterday because on the 28th I was out with my best friend all day, anyway, excuses excuses I know. </p><p>Also, minor breakdown for this one because I started writing it and realized I couldn't remember Malcolm driving once in the show so I was like <i>can he dRIVE?</i> and figured it could be poetic licence if it turned out he couldn't, but that night I dreamt I was watching an episode and he opened the driver side of a car and looked me straight in the eyes and said "of course I can drive dumbass" I'm not even making his up I woke up so confused guys. But I took it as a sign, so here goes:</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span> People are puzzles that Malcolm has learned to complete with few of the pieces in hand. He picks up one or two, predicts what the whole will represent. Even the broken parts, the ill-fitting ones can tell a story. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He has learned from experience that childhood isn’t the corner pieces you discard and replace as you grow up; no, childhood is the discolored remnants that no effort to hide will ever truly conceal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> And when they’re ripped away, nothing can ever fit in their place again; in a silent corner of him, Malcolm remembers his mother’s all-encompassing embrace like a shield, his father’s hand on his head a reassurance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> What does the picture look like, once his safety turned out to be his family’s destruction, when the father that gave him half of his life stole </span>
  <em>
    <span>at least twenty-three </span>
  </em>
  <span>futures?</span>
</p><p>
  <span> All that is left of the child that Malcolm used to be lives in the night he used to fear: monsters in the dark for monsters of his own blood is a trade that feels too ironic when his father had been the one checking under the bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> This kid has made a home of the sleepless hours and pays rent in nightmares; Malcolm can do nothing but accept that and function as best as he can. He feeds the restlessness with case solved and victims saved; atonement is a height he’ll never reach no matter how many rocks he piles up to climb, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> It might make the hallucinations worth it, at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> He’s not sure it’s enough to make up for this, though: they say driving while sleep deprived equals drunk driving. He avoids testing that theory as much as he can, New-York making that easy for him when no one can pick him up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> The exceptions go fine– until they don’t. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Malcolm did not fall asleep. There was no dramatic blink of the eyes, heavy eyelids refusing to open back up until the blare of a truck horn wakes him up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> The sun is going down, and he remembers to turn on his headlights when the ones of a car in the opposite lane stab him directly into the meat of his brain. It’s an illusion, he knows, </span>
  <em>
    <span>brains are nerveless</span>
  </em>
  <span>, his father used to teach him. They can’t hurt. But his eyes are about to pop off from the pressure at their back, and Malcolm refrains from pushing against them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He keeps going. Dani just called him: her car broke down just outside of the city and neither JT nor Gil can come get her. “It’s what friends are for, right?” Malcolm hadn’t been able to resist saying, savoring the words. It’s as much a tease as a way to prod at the unfamiliar tie to test it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> Dani had laughed, thanked him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> Malcolm drifts into the memories, one after the other; he’s at the station sharing sweets, he’s playing </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jules Timothy</span>
  </em>
  <span> and losing with a wrinkle of JT’s nose, he’s looking at the picture of two men murdered in the woods. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He still processes the asphalt being eaten by the car; but who’s driving? He’s sitting in the middle, where every child hates to be even when it’s the only way for the sickness to abate. Malcolm hasn’t been road sick in forever. It’s both familiar and deeply unsettling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He thinks a little air would do him some good, but when he reaches to the side the door is smooth where there should be the window lever. He looks, finds swimming buttons dimly glowing in the darkness. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He blinks at them before pushing down with clumsy fingers, the cold wind blowing Malcolm back inside of his own body. He looks back at the ro–</span>
</p><p>
  <span> The thunder crashes into him with a violence that ripples into his teeth, shuts off every light, and shatters his eardrums like crystal. The weather had been fine all day, Malcolm remembers, he doesn’t...he doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>get it</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> It hurts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> The seatbelt bites into his ribs when he takes his first chopped up breath, and Malcolm arches against the pain to no avail. It has no mercy, taking a crowbar to his vertebras until Malcolm feels himself being ripped apart. His pleading for it to stop is nothing more than a choked out groan. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He’s powerless, but the routine he has learned whenever panic grips the spaces inside of his chest kicks in; he can’t do deep breath, but he can wrestle back control. He can open his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> The light is foggy– no. The smoke coming out of the crushed hood is bathed in the headlights’ beams. Behind, Malcolm makes out the skid lines that bounce off the tree stoically standing to the side of the road. There’s nothing else on the other side of the cracked windshield.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> He tries rolling his head on the headrest but a spear of fire is embedded in his neck– his throat is too dry to make another sound. He has no idea if–</span>
</p><p>
  <span> He has no idea if he hit someone. What if…</span>
</p><p>
  <span> The possibilities scratch their ways up his chest into his mouth, transform into a sob he can’t contain. What if he killed someone? This would not be the murder his father is expecting from him, but it would be the last crack in Malcolm’s foundations. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>You’re used to hurting people, though, aren’t you?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Martin says in the passenger’s seat. Malcolm can picture the proud smile on his face, the one he agonizes over every time he comes down from the high of adrenaline that allows him to hurt people in the name of solving a case. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He wants to go home. Not the home from </span>
  <em>
    <span>now</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the one he can’t find solace in. No, the home from before the ugliness of the world ever touched him in ways he can’t wash off. He shifts to get out, pieces of glass falling from the creases of his clothes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> And he screams. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> His leg– his leg is a void of darkness ready to swallow him to escape the pain; but Malcolm’s instincts scream at him to stay conscious or die. He pants, one, two, three times, the jolt of his diaphragm edging on the kind of seizing that would mean throwing up. His heart hits the back of his throat with each frantic beat, but Malcolm forces himself to swallow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He tastes iron. Biting of his cheek or nosebleed are the only two acceptable options, since he intends to survive this –it takes him by surprise; in a quiet corner of his mind, he has always been half convinced he would welcome the chance to be done with it all. To substitute unthinkable suicide with unfortunate incident.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> People might say Malcolm has a deathwish; until today he has never been sure enough to contradict them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> But he’s so scared. He doesn’t want to die. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He thinks about every photograph of corpses pinned on a white board, and suddenly instead of the terror of slipping into the mind of a killer with ease, Malcolm remembers that his salvation is his empathy for the victims. He cries for them as he cries for himself now, tears tainted red by the dry blood on his cheeks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Help,” he rasps out, aware no one is around to hear him but needing the words to be out there so he can prove to himself for good that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be saved. So he can hear it and act on it, since he’s the only one who can. The word dislodges something in his lungs, and he starts coughing; he starts believing it won’t stop and his determination will be for nothing, but thankfully it stops.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> The blood he licks on his lips is the sand inside the hourglass of his chest. The countdown starts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> Malcolm inhales carefully, then uses his held breath to try moving his arm. His shoulder is a jammed mechanism so he goes for the elbow instead, inching his hand right and up, to his inside pocket. Feeling the smooth warmth of his phone’s casing is the first victory, but it comes with a gamble. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> If his only way to call for help is as broken as he is, he’ll have to think of something else. He’s not sure he can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> His fingers ache but he grips the phone tightly and lets his hand fall down with a relieved exhale. Looking down is a challenge, but Malcolm is rewarded for the agony: light answers the push of the lock button. He sobs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> Swiping across the cracked screen unlocks his phone; Malcolm notes the smear of red but it’s secondary to the two bars of signal in the upper corner. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> All that’s left if calling. Waiting long enough for his name to replace the dial tone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Bright?” It makes him smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> Malcolm used to believe part of growing up was refusing reaching hands because you’re supposed to handle your struggles on your own. So he neatly folded them and piled them behind closed doors; people hate a mess as much as they hate having to clean up for someone else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> Being cold and alone with his hurt was expected, since there is no comfort to be found when there is no pain to be seen. He used to believe he deserved it, too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> But the voice answering him is tied to so many memories; a laugh through the receiver, sharing coffee at the end of a hard day, playing </span>
  <em>
    <span>Johan Tam</span>
  </em>
  <span> and losing, finally understanding that burdens can be shared too. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m not fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It didn’t come easy, the first time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “I need help.” The words sting inside his ribcage, but it’s so simple really. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> And it feeds something else to the child in him, a hope that teaches him the crime he’s punishing Malcolm for isn’t his fault. That he has the right to move on, whenever he’s ready. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t wait for forgiveness</span>
  </em>
  <span>, his therapist had said, once, </span>
  <em>
    <span>because you didn’t do anything wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> He’s starting to believe it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “–hang tight we’ll be here soon.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span> Everything is going to be okay. He can rest, now.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come visit my <a href="https://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com">little internet home</a> I have meringues I made myself (for real though) and a tendency to love talking to people.<br/>Also, kudos and comments? :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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